Page 2173 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 21 June 2011
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Given the complexity of the scheme, it is appropriate that we adjourn the debate today and debate the detail of the bill and the amendments to it on Thursday. I particularly want to thank members for their patience with my amendments, and I would also like to take the opportunity to formally thank all the officials from ACTPLA and Treasury who have been most helpful and very constructive in addressing my proposed amendments.
The process has been a terrific example of constructive engagement from both sides, and I do thank the minister’s office, the Commissioner for Revenue and all of the Treasury and ACTPLA officials who have met with my office and provided very constructive feedback on our concerns about the bill and assisted in finding solutions to those concerns.
As I said, we will be putting those amendments forward. I believe that they address many of the issues that have been raised by the industry. I look forward to debating those on Thursday. Finally, I would very much like to thank my senior adviser, Tom Warne-Smith, for the significant effort he has put into this bill and for the hours of negotiations that he has undertaken.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (8.39): I would like to echo some of Ms Hunter’s comments on the bill and also elaborate on a number of the issues, especially those addressed by our amendments. First, I would like to make a brief comment on Mr Seselja’s speech, which basically I think had one theme: if there is a tax, if there is a change, things will be different, and change is bad.
A good example of this would be his financial analysis. He basically said, “Yes, the tax will affect things and it might in fact affect three different entities—the developer, the owner of the land at present and the potential new owner of the development.” He did forget the fourth entity that would be affected, which is the government, who presumably will get some revenue from this.
Basically, it could really only be said that he said things will change. Therefore, it is bad. But I think it is actually not quite that simple. Things will change, but not every change is bad. Some changes could be positive and some aspects of this could be very positive, in fact.
I think there is actually great universal agreement that codification is the way to go with lease variation charge. My understanding is that a couple of years ago we actually had the Property Council arguing in favour of the concept of codification because it gave certainty. Actually, I think that Mr Seselja has argued quite eloquently in favour of certainty. Certainly, codification is a way to get a degree of certainty as to what is going to happen.
I think the issues that have arisen are around the amounts of money. As Ms Hunter mentioned, about a year or so ago we discovered as part of this process that it seemed the charge before had actually absolutely no relationship to the increase in value of the lease. It was a totally arbitrary figure. But no-one is admitting that they had any idea how it happened. So I guess if people had known this at the beginning, the whole
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